Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  “Patterns? You’ve been watching them everywhere and you noticed something before anyone else? I don’t buy that. You’re not in the game anymore—you don’t have the resources.”

  “Well, that’s what it is, buy it or not. I’ve spent a lifetime making contacts, building networks of watchers and listeners. I’ve had feelers out, and a line was tripped. Like a tripwire. Or more like a tsunami warning. I detected the tremors and can see what’s coming. Not specifically, but enough to predict that this is certainly the next Zodiac attack, and that it’s the real deal.”

  “I want to see it. The tape of the hostage.”

  “Two minutes. Two minutes and you will.”

  “What happens in two minutes?”

  “I leave. And you have a job to get on with.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Look, Jed, this terror cell? This isn’t a series of hacks driven to infiltrate high-value political, economic and media locations in the US. It’s not going to be about attacking us and hurting us for the sake of it. I have to do what I have to do, and you do what you do. This certainly won’t be an escalation of hacks that have been going on for years out of China and Russia. This will be undertaken for one reason: to shut the Internet down—and to keep in down. It’s the end game, the worst-case scenario, and to get us there, there will be unimaginable chaos and costs.”

  “No,” Walker said. “Not unimaginable. Because you imagined it. In your Zodiac war-game. You and countless other security boffins holed up in some ballroom in some hotel on the beltway. Someone there thought this up, and now look at where we are.”

  “We must prepare for what might happen.” David shook his head. The guy looked so tired he might just keel over and sleep, right there. “That was the entire purpose of Zodiac.”

  “In designing Zodiac, you didn’t prepare for hypotheticals. You designed a map to destroy the world. Can’t you see that?”

  David sighed, said, “And you’re missing your connection.”

  11

  “Madam Secretary,” Christie said.

  “General, I’ve got one minute before briefing,” the head of Homeland Security replied. “Have you got something for me?”

  “I want to offer our assistance and the full resources of the—”

  “Thank you, General, duly noted and filed away.”

  “We can help.”

  “Right. At any rate, our hands are tied until the attacks unfold. At the moment we’re calling everybody in and looking at every possible target that we can. This is a matter for law-enforcement agencies. Not the DoD. Certainly not the Army.”

  “Remember, ma’am,” Christie said, her hand tight on her phone, “if this becomes catastrophic enough, we take over.”

  “Well, we have to make sure that it doesn’t come to that now won’t we.”

  “Seems out of your hands.”

  “What you’re suggesting is tantamount to martial law, General. You’re a military outfit. Posse Comitatus Act etcetera—removes the Army from domestic law enforcement.”

  “If we’re protecting America, it is what it is.”

  “Try telling my boss that.”

  “The President? He’s my boss too. By its express terms, the Posse Comitatus Act is not a complete barrier to the use of the armed forces for a range of domestic purposes, including law-enforcement functions, when the use of the armed forces is authorized by an Act of Congress—”

  “Which isn’t in session.”

  “Or the President determines that the use of the armed forces is required to fulfill the President’s obligations under the Constitution to respond promptly in times of war, insurrection, or other serious emergency—like we did in Katrina.”

  “Look, I do enjoy your little hypotheticals, but I must go.”

  The call ended. Christie leaned back and wondered: what would it take? Six hours? Or twelve? Sooner or later, they will ask for her help. Then we’ll see what’s what, and who’s who . . .

  •

  “I need to know what you know,” Walker said to his father. He stretched his legs and shook his arms, feeling almost back to normal.

  “You know it. I’ve just told you.”

  “That I have a connection to this?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were tipped off because of patterns.”

  “Yes.”

  “What patterns?”

  “Right now the FBI are running a global operation to find fourteen missing persons,” David said. “They were all abducted over the past twenty-four hours. And the only reason to do that would be as a precursor to this attack.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They represent ICANN,” David said. “They are the fourteen people in the world who have password-controlled electronic keys to restart the Internet in the advent of a catastrophic failure. They’ve been the same fourteen people since the Internet began. They meet four times a year to generate new electronic keys, which last three months; at the three-month mark, the keys expire and error messages spread across the Net. Overnight, all fourteen have been abducted. Vanished. Without them, the Internet will be useless—all Web addresses will be invalid.”

  “So, now you’re saying that if the Internet is shut down, it can’t be restarted?”

  “Not quickly.”

  “How quick?”

  “A month?”

  “There has to be another way. It can’t be reliant on a few people.”

  “There are seven back-up people, with back-up keys . . . but the back-up keys contain only a fragment of the code needed to create a new master key, and it takes time to piece it together for authentication. These people are only needed when the Internet goes down—they’re the ones who are able to reboot it. And sure, we can select other key-masters. Rebooting the security matrix and making complete new sets of keys will take a few weeks—in theory, because it’s never been attempted—and that’s if the safes containing the back-up keys are kept . . . safe.”

  “So, if it’s shut down—it’s down for up to a month.”

  “Maybe longer. Probably longer. We’re dealing with hypotheticals and worst case, because it’s never been tried.”

  “The world in darkness for a month . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand what I can do about this,” Walker said. “The FBI will handle the abductions. The White House will be working on a response to the threatened cyber attacks. What am I missing?”

  “The connection to Jasper Brokaw.”

  “But what can I do? They could be holding him anywhere on the planet.”

  “He was abducted four hours ago; the FBI have a witness to the snatch, from his home in Palo Alto. The lead’s gone cold. The vehicle was switched and torched twenty miles west of the scene.”

  “This was in Silicon Valley? Four hours ago—that doesn’t mean he’s still stateside, not for sure. Anywhere with a computer and high bandwidth could be used, right?”

  “He’s in the US. It makes sense. The only alternative to fit such a short time span would be to move him by plane, but that involves too much risk.”

  “He could be in Central or South America now. They could have transported him like you did to me.”

  “All flights have been checked,” David stated.

  “You got me out.”

  “All flights have been checked,” David repeated, his tone unwavering.

  “Fine. So, assume you’re right and he’s still in the US. How can I find him?”

  “Do what you do best—investigate it. Run it.”

  “The FBI and Homeland Security will be all over it.”

  “They don’t have what you have.”

  “The connection? To what?”

  “Brokaw.”

  “I told you I don’t know the name.”

  “You know his father.”

  Walker just shook his head. Couldn’t think of a Brokaw he’d ever worked with.

  David said, “He was the Air Force Acade
my’s commandant back when you were a cadet there.”

  Finally it clicked. “General Brokaw. That was almost twenty years ago . . .” Walker trailed off.

  “And you have a connection—not just to him.”

  Walker sighed.

  12

  Walker said, “Monica . . .”

  “That’s right,” David said.

  “I—how do you know . . .”

  “You told your mother.”

  “I did?” Walker thought back. He’d been twenty; Monica a year older. The commandant’s daughter, a psychology major at Cornell. They’d met at the Academy gym at the start of the July Fourth weekend, then caught up later that day and spent the three days holed up in a hotel in Boulder, Colorado. Close to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs but far enough away from the prying eyes of fellow cadets and staff. And her father. “Mom told you?”

  “Yes.” Walker thought about his mother’s condition back then. She was lucid, but that was around when it had started, when he’d moved out of home. He’d called her every other week and each time he’d noticed it a little more. Dementia.

  He looked at his father. “How did they pick Jasper for this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because of you, and me?”

  “No. It can’t be that. I swear I have no idea. It’s because of Jasper’s skills set. Nothing more.”

  “This is linked back to you, it has to be.”

  “There’s no way of knowing that.”

  “Whoever is running this Zodiac cell, whoever took this guy hostage, they know of the connection.”

  “When I created Zodiac you were in the Air Force, in Iraq, your first overseas tour. I looked at his record—Jasper had nothing to do with cyber stuff then. There’s no way this goes back to me, to you.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “I don’t like coincidences.”

  “Me either. This could be connected to us. Of course it could. Because you started Zodiac, and they’re working backward, not forward, and they have the benefit of hindsight.” Walker looked at his father. Watchful. “Whoever they are.”

  “Well, this is happening, so you have to deal with it for what it is. Look into Jasper. Go find Monica, talk to her, see what she knows and what she thinks. Find a way in.” David’s watch beeped. “That’s it. Time to go.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got my work, you’ve got yours.”

  Walker held his father’s eye. “You really think Monica can help?”

  “It’s a lead. Pull at the thread and see where it goes.”

  David Walker handed over an iPad from one of the guys standing sentry.

  “Her father’s address is on there. She’s with him. The video of Jasper too. Look at it and leave the tablet behind—it’s not secure.”

  Walker looked at the screen, the address pinned on a Google map. Riverside Drive, Palermo. “The General lives in San Diego? That’s why we’re meeting here?”

  David nodded. “It’s close to here. Watch that movie file. Look up Monica and then leave. Toss the tablet out the window a few blocks from here. Someone will pick it up, and with any luck it might take some NSA resources off you—because once you find her, you’ll be a person of interest to them.” David stared at his son. “Stay off the grid, Jed. Completely dark. You know how the NSA and FBI will be working this. This is happening real time, which means you have to get out there, on the road.”

  Walker nodded.

  David said, “They’re not looking for you yet but as soon as you make contact with Monica Brokaw, they will be. They’ll voiceprint you and—well, you know the rest.”

  Walker did know. They’d have him tagged. Any time he spoke on a phone the government would have him identified and his position located within a minute. Then it would be a matter of how quickly they could get a team to him. Local police could be minutes away. But they’d likely have their own people, mobile forward units deployed to his last known addresses, ready to pounce.

  And there was more to it, too. For several years the NSA had mapped the movement of every cell phone in the world by monitoring MAC and IMEI addresses: the unique identifiers emitted by each cellular and wi-fi device. The phone didn’t even have to be turned on. It was harder to do in countries where they had to tap into local cell towers, but in the United States, it was as easy as giving the order to target the phone or tablet.

  Walker said, “What will you be doing?”

  “What I have to.”

  “Can you stop this?”

  “No, I really can’t. Neither can your friends in the FBI and UN. This will be up to you.”

  “It can’t be that simple.”

  David Walker headed for the door, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder as he passed. The hand was heavy. Warm. Walker remembered those hands. They’d held him and picked him up and comforted him more times than he could ever count or fully appreciate. The hands of a stranger became the hands of his father again. “No, it won’t be simple. But you can do it. I’ve always believed in you.”

  “You didn’t say where you’re going,” Walker said. “What are you going to do?”

  “What I’ve been doing for years,” David said, continuing to the door.

  “Running?”

  David stopped. His head tilted down toward the floor. Shame? Hard to tell. He turned and faced his son.

  “I helped make this,” David said. “I have to do what I can to take it apart.”

  “Are you any closer to finding who started Zodiac off?” Walker asked. He knew it could have been taken and started by the rogue CIA guys he’d dealt with a while back, who’d hatched a plot to privatize the CIA via the assassination of the Vice President. But Walker felt that there was more. There had to be. “Someone is steering this. Linking the cells. Giving them their activation signal.”

  For his part, David Walker was silent as he stood in the doorway, his security men waiting outside.

  Walker opened his hands in a gesture that said, Give me something. Anything. His father shook his head, then tossed Walker a car key on an old NASA key ring, along with a folded piece of paper. “You’ll be needing wheels. And, well, let’s call it a letter of transit, to expedite you at the border. Good luck.”

  He was gone without another word. The two heavies too. Walker stood by the window slats and watched them depart. Saw his father and the two guys drive away in a blacked-out Suburban. One car remained outside.

  “Oh, you’re kidding me . . .”

  13

  Walker stood and stared.

  The car was a 1971 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda; the Cuda. The car was older than Walker and just as banged up. Shiny black once, now a dull matt finish from decades of sun and rain and wind and grit. The panels had a few dings and scrapes and bad repair jobs. California plates.

  It was a thing of beauty.

  There were no feminine curves like on an old Porsche or Ferrari or Bugatti. This was a beast. Old-school American muscle. It was something he had wanted as a teen, desperately. He’d had a poster of it in his room in Philly. His friend’s father had owned one, bright yellow, which they’d snuck out in a couple of times, cruising the streets like kings.

  He walked around it. The fat tires were near new, plenty of tread front and rear. Sixteen-inch things with mid-sized walls, none of these modern sports car types where the rubber wall was only an inch high and you felt every bump like it would rattle your teeth loose.

  Walker popped the hood. The engine was clean and tidy. Not gleaming new like in some kind of Transformers movie, but an engine that had been taken care of, probably overhauled recently by someone who cared. He checked the oil. It was honey-colored and to the full line. Coolant was as it should be. He closed the hood and looked around. Nothing doing. He got in the car and put the key in the ignition. Under a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. Nicely run in for a big engine like this, over such a lifespan.

  Walker told himself he’d spend five minutes
online, then watch the movie file and then ditch the tablet a few blocks away. The camera had black tape over it so that those tracking any search hits on keywords such as “Brokaw” and “NSA” and “hacking” and so on could not take his picture or video feed. Tape covered the microphone too, but he wouldn’t be talking. But they could still geo-locate him, so time mattered. Ideally he’d search Monica on a different device, in a different location, so that anyone analyzing the Web-traffic would not make a connection, but there was no time.

  First, he Googled Monica Brokaw. She had a lot of hits, mainly social-media pages. She looked good. She’d looked good at twenty-one, but now she was a woman and had lived in her skin, and it suited her. Google images brought up a raft of shots, almost all of them business related, at events and public talks. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail in all of them. She had a tan. She appeared the same height and physicality as he remembered her: five-nine, athletic. She was slightly curvier now. A woman.

  Walker gave himself another couple of minutes. He had her father’s address in San Diego written down in his father’s handwriting. He wanted to know as much as he could about Monica inside of a minute on the Net.

  Her Pinterest page was the only one of the social-media pages to show her personal side, her likes and dislikes outside any business thoughts or motivations. She liked home and decorating design, Cape Cod–type places, green gardens, wide open rural spaces, beaches with breaking waves. Her LinkedIn profile gave her CV. Currently joint director of Brokaw Jennings & Associates, a human resources company. She’d previously worked at Yahoo and at an executive recruiting firm in LA, the latter going bust in the GFC. She held a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Master of Arts in Communication. He couldn’t find any confirmation of a partner or family. Her Twitter page had more than a thousand followers, all of whom seemed business related, and there were no Brokaws among them.

  Walker then Googled Jasper Brokaw. A million-plus hits in the results. He clicked on the news search, and the gist of the reports showed that every news outlet was taking this seriously. The first dozen pages were American sites, the remainder a mix of global news sites and then pages of chatter. Reddit was in overdrive with users discussing the possibilities of the coming attacks. Walker could spend hours scrolling through them.